The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (26 page)

But why did he go crusading? He must have been driven by a vow – his side of a bargain made with God when he was in exile, when the future was bleak, his brother and nephews newly murdered and the perpetrator of the crimes on the throne of England. God had answered his prayers and so now Edward could fulfil his side of the agreement.

If this was the case then he would following the precedent set by Anthony who – presumably – made a similar arrangement with God when his and King Edward’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb, back in the autumn of 1470. He too had gone crusading once the re-establishment of King Edward was achieved. Perhaps his friend, Antoine, the Great Bastard of Burgundy, who had taken 2,000 men to fight the Moors in 1464, had inspired him because he had gone crusading to redeem a pledge his father had made publicly ten years earlier. It is also likely that the Spanish monarchs had offered to pay handsomely for an English nobleman and three companies of infantry. There is no evidence that Edward had any money of his own and it would be surprising if Henry had volunteered to pay.

Edward arrived home from his crusading in August 1486, having been away for seven or eight months. He had fulfilled his vow and lost his front teeth; a few of his company were dead, some were missing, but most were home safe and sound.

The soldiers would have been paid for three months in advance before they sailed but would now need to have their pay made up to date, if that had not been done in Spain. It had been a costly operation: six pence per day per man totals £5 or £6 per man; ‘peti-captains’ were paid double; officers would earn more or they might just be there for the experience; ships were hired; mouths fed and munitions bought, so the full expedition would have cost over £2,000, a princely sum. If Edward paid, then where did he find the money, or was he provided with funds? The records are very patchy but at the time Ferdinand and Isabella were hiring professional soldiers and – on balance – it seems probable that Edward’s company was on a contract.

His first duty on returning home was to report to the King who would want to be briefed on events and politics in Spain and Portugal. Most kings gathered information from travellers as well as ambassadors and King Henry was an avid collector of intelligence. He would also want to know how the Spanish monarchs viewed him, a newcomer to kingship.

The problems of the late Castilian King Henry IV (‘the Impotent’) and the validity of Isabella’s right to his throne were grist for the mill, as was the offence caused to Isabella by King Edward’s rejection of her hand 20 years earlier, particularly as he had chosen instead Edward Woodville’s sister, ‘a mere widow of England’. King Ferdinand of Aragon’s antipathy to the French would be of particular interest, as would both of their views of English politics and King Henry himself.

The King and Edward discussed a possible engagement for one of Queen Elizabeth’s sisters to the Portuguese heir apparent and they must also have talked about the Portuguese expeditions down the African coast and their newly discovered gold mine. King Henry asked Edward what had impressed him most in Portugal. The answer was, ‘The sight of a man who took orders from nobody and was obeyed by all.’ 2

King Henry would need to know about any English dissidents lurking in Portugal, men such as Sir Edward Brampton, who had been sent by King Richard to capture Edward’s ships in the Solent but, since Bosworth, had lived in Lisbon. He would need watching and it later transpired that his wife had taken a page called Piers or Piris with her to Lisbon. This Piers later became Perkin Warbeck who claimed to be Duke Richard of York, Edward IV’s youngest son, having miraculously escaped from the Tower. Whoever the page was, he was going to give King Henry much worry during the 1490s.3

Of particular interest would be the current campaign in the Reconquista and the fighting abilities of the Spanish soldiery. Edward could tell the King how effective the Spanish artillery was at siege warfare and how the infantry had suffered during the march from the Moorish light horsemen. More importantly, he might have had views on how useful the light Spanish cavalry, the
genitors
, were at reconnaissance and harrying the enemy. He had also seen the result of progress in the manufacturing of hand-held guns which had enabled the Spanish to turn raw recruits into soldiers within weeks, in contrast to the English system where bowmen trained from birth (and would be a declining resource).

However, while musketeers could be quickly trained and the smoke and noise from a volley of shot was terrifying, there was a drawback. A musketeer could only fire about once every three minutes, while an archer could shoot up to ten arrows in one minute. There was also the matter of accuracy: a distance of 10–12 paces from the target was recommended for hand-held guns and only about one shot in 500 hit the target.4

As well as weapons and tactics, Edward may have remarked on the quartermastering and nurturing of the troops, all of which was overseen by Queen Isabella. He had left at least one of his men in her care, a Rupert (possibly an officer). On 20 April 1487 there is an entry in her accounts: ‘To Ruberte, the Englishman, who came with the Count of Escales and stayed behind wounded, 4,000 mrs.’ 5 Perhaps Edward commented on the morale of the troops and – as an aside – he might have mentioned Columbus, the Genoese navigator with the ambition to sail west to China and make a fortune for his patrons.

That September, a month after Edward arrived home, William Slater was appointed ‘bailiffe of Chadlyngton’. He was the man who last appeared in the records in 1483 as ‘gone to the see with Sir Edward Wodevile’. Presumably he had been with Edward ever since and seen service in Spain. King Henry obviously liked him, as Slater was on 4 March 1488 appointed a Yeoman of the Crown and also ‘bailiffe of Chadeworth’.

Edward’s own responsibilities would claim his attention. The attainder on Anthony was reversed that November. Perhaps he paid an early visit to Carisbrooke and Porchester to settle some of his household troops for light duties and building work; the majority of them would be paid off. Then he was back at court to celebrate the birth of his great-nephew, Arthur, the first-born of King Henry and Queen Elizabeth. At the christening ‘the Lord Edward Woodville’ and three others ‘bore the canopy’ over the prince. Afterwards ‘all the torches were burning, the king’s trumpets and minstrels playing’ and the young prince was carried to the King and Queen, while ‘in the church yard were set two pipes of wine’.6

Edward wrote to King João following up the suggestion of an engagement for one of his York nieces with the Portuguese heir7 and the records show him being paid 36 marks at Easter,8 so he did something else – unknown – that was a particular service for King Henry.

There was peace and calm across the country. Edward’s sister Catherine and her new husband Duke Jasper of Bedford were enjoying Buckingham’s estates.9 The administration ran smoothly, with King Henry’s supporters installed in the key jobs; meanwhile he continued to tighten his grip on power. Many Welshmen arrived at court; a story current at the time had St Peter reduced to despair by a sudden influx of the Welsh into heaven, driving everyone mad with their incessant talk. St Peter arranged for an angel to stand outside and shout ‘Caws Pob’ (baked cheese, or Welsh rarebit). The Welsh charged out to get the delicacy and the gates were slammed behind them, much to everyone’s relief.10

In March Edward had been granted four manors in the Isle of Wight to hold during Edward of Warwick’s minority and in November he was being referred to as ‘the beloved and faithful Edward Wideville, knight’ when he was granted the right ‘to present a suitable literate person’ for the next vacancy in the cannonry at a collegiate church in Leicester.11

Life was good, the country was at peace, rural activities continued and the careful Treasury records of five years later12 show how the King enjoyed himself: there were payments to minstrels of 13s-4d; to clerks for making lists for a tournament of £24-2s-10d; to paying the King’s debts where he ‘lost at buttes with his cross bow’ of 13s-4d; where he lost at cards of £40; to maidens of Lambeth for May of 10s; for a pair of tables and dice of 16s; to the young damsel that danced of £30; to Pudsey Piper on the bagpipe of 6s-8d; where he lost again at cards of 40s; to a Spaniard, the tennis player, of £4; for tennis balls of 2s; where he lost at tennis of 27s-8d; to the challengers at the jousts of £66-13s-4d and the same to the defenders; and so forth.

This was not a parsimonious or starchy court; that happened later in the reign. Now it sounds good fun and, indeed, some of the costs seem rather high, e.g. £30 for a dancing girl seems generous when compared to more mundane expenditure such as, four years later, paying Cabot £10 for discovering North America. The King clearly liked his gambling and girls. Edward was about and presumably joined in with some of these activities. It was a happy and idyllic time, but suddenly in November a rumour spread across England – Warwick will rise!

Over the next three months these rumours gained such strength that the King was obliged to react. Everywhere there was whispering: Edward of Warwick, son of the executed Duke of Clarence, blood royal of England and grandson of the Kingmaker, was to lead an invasion from Ireland.

King Henry tried to quash the rumour by displaying an 11-year-old boy who, he said, was the real Warwick and had been kept safely locked up in the Tower. But there was a convincing pretender, also aged 11, who had assumed the name of Lambert Simnel and had been coached, so we are told, by a
‘
subtle priest’ named William Symonds. History is uncertain about who was the real Warwick, but the Tudor view was unambiguous: the Warwick in Ireland was the impostor. The real Warwick was the one who walked from the Tower to St Paul’s in February 1487, heard mass and talked to people in the nave after the service.

John, Earl of Lincoln, King Richard’s nephew and his appointed heir, had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.13 Soon after Bosworth he had made his submission to King Henry but now he decided to support the Irish Warwick. Why he should remains a mystery, but either he accepted the young man’s identity or regarded him as a useful stalking horse. Anyway, Lincoln sailed to Burgundy for talks with his Aunt Margaret, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, who had loved her brother Richard and consequently ‘pursued Henry with insatiable hatred and fiery wrath’.14

On this occasion the hatred manifested itself in the form of 2,000 prime German and Swiss mercenaries led by a redoubtable Commander, Martin Schwarz. The Dowager Duchess had cast about for someone to provide suitable help and found Schwarz, the archetypal military entrepreneur. He had started his career making shoes in Augsburg but, finding that dull, followed the drum and decided military enterprise was much more to his taste. He had fought for Burgundy at the siege of Neuss and then captained 200 Swiss mercenaries in the Low Countries. Recently he had moved up a grade and was now able to contract with the Dowager Duchess for 2,000 trained soldiers. Contracts of the time required the payment of three months’ wages for each man in advance, so the Duchess’s hatred would have cost her something in the order of £5,000.15

She obviously felt that her late brother King Richard was worth that or she had a particular interest in the boy, perhaps both. There had been rumours that she had an illegitimate child but there is no obvious substance to them. The mercenaries were recruited and added to the hard core of Richard’s men, followers who had escaped to Burgundy. These included the once powerful Lord Lovell, ‘the dog’, who had already organized one small revolt while Edward was away in Spain, and a captain from Calais who, with part of the garrison, had refused to take the oath of loyalty to King Henry.

In England free pardons were offered to any plotters who turned King’s evidence. The Council was worried and the Dowager Queen Elizabeth was suspected of involvement, but while there was no evidence or logic to support this the Council felt that she would be safer in retirement in a convent in Bermondsey. Fear and rumour were about and on 3 June a proclamation was issued ordering the pillory for anyone telling ‘untrue and forged tidings and tales’.

Lincoln and his army arrived in Dublin on 5 May 1487 and were greeted by Gerald Fitzgerald, the great Earl of Kildare, who had effectively been viceroy since the death of Clarence in 1478. The Irish, always eager to discomfit the English, crowned their Warwick in the early Gothic splendour of Christchurch Cathedral with a gold circlet borrowed from a statue of the Virgin Mary. Lambert Simnel, a.k.a. the Earl of Warwick, was paraded through the streets as the new King Edward VI on the shoulders of d’Arcy of Platten, the ‘tallest man of his time’, and Irishmen enlisted with enthusiasm. Henry considered the pre-emptive strike of invading Ireland. Kildare and the Irish peers considered trying to lure him there, but then the thought of feeding Lincoln’s army while they waited for Henry put paid to that plan and they hurried their King Edward VI and the invaders on their way to England.

On 4 June the invasion landed at Piel Island and occupied the castle that guards the deepwater harbour of Barrow-in-Furness. Lambert Simnel, as Edward of Warwick, declared himself king and knighted some of his followers, rather as Henry had done two years previously. They moved on to Barrow, a short walk at low water, and camped by Ulverston.

Christopher Urswick, the King’s chaplain and intelligencer, was already in Lancashire, where he had been brought up. Vergil reports that he was inspecting the Lancashire ports to see which ones the invaders might use and he was around there when they arrived, so immediately sent the news south. He also reports that King Henry promptly arrested the Marquis of Dorset, observing, as he sent him to the Tower, ‘if he were a true friend he would not take offence’. (Afterwards Dorset was released with an unblemished character but King Henry was always suspicious of him.)